Flight Attendants Union Challenges Google's Spirit Airlines Data Purchase

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA has filed an objection in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York regarding Google's $10 million acquisition of internal data from the collapsed Spirit Airlines. The dataset includes approximately 100 million emails and 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, which Google intends to use to train its AI models.

The union argues that the transaction's privacy protections are designed for consumers but leave sensitive employee records vulnerable. Union leadership expressed concern that de-identification processes may still allow confidential records to be traced back to individual workers. While the union is not attempting to block the sale entirely, it is demanding the removal of all identifying information traceable to employees.

Google has disputed these risks, stating that a third party will handle the de-identification process and that the company has no interest in personal identifying information. The purchase follows a bankruptcy auction in which Google outbid the AI recruiting company Mercor, which had offered $7.5 million for the assets.